{"id":765986,"date":"2026-07-16T09:37:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T09:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/765986\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T09:37:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T09:37:32","slug":"what-higher-credit-card-spending-means-for-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/765986\/","title":{"rendered":"What higher credit card spending means for the economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u200bOn Tuesday morning, three of the biggest banks in the country<\/a> reported on the state of their finances: Bank of America<\/a>, Citigroup<\/a>, and JPMorgan Chase<\/a>. <\/p>\n

One common theme in those quarterly reports? Consumers are reaching for their credit cards more. All three banks reported that credit card use was up this spring from the same time a year ago.<\/p>\n

In the past few months, 32-year-old Katrina Linden has been spending a lot on fun stuff: She bought tickets to the music festivals Coachella and BottleRock. She went skiing. She went camping.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo just putting more towards the larger experiences,\u201d Linden said.<\/p>\n

Linden used credit cards to pay for that travel, and she makes at least the minimum payment on each of her cards every month \u2014 though she does carry a balance. Still, she said being able to do the things she wants to do is worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s clear that homeownership is out of reach for me, at least for the time being,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, I’m trying to move away from saving for a future that might not even be possible, and spending more on on immediate experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Travel and entertainment \u2014 fun, generally \u2014 was a big credit card purchase for lots of people this spring, according to Lora Monfared, head of consumer card products at Bank of America, which is a Marketplace underwriter.<\/p>\n

\u201cCruise lines, airfare<\/a> \u2026 [the] FIFA World Cup<\/a> is happening right now,\u201d Monfared said. \u201cWe are definitely seeing elevated spending in cities that are host cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

But also, people are charging more of the necessities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings like fuel,\u201d Monfared said. \u201cAnd that’s going to be driven more by things like gas prices going up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monfared said more of their customers are paying their balances off in full than were prior to the pandemic. <\/p>\n

Still, consumers need to be careful, according to Merrill J. Reynolds, managing director of executive education at Southern Methodist University Cox. He said as a rule of thumb, a person\u2019s credit card debt shouldn\u2019t be more than 30% of their available credit, or their credit score could get dinged.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won’t be able to get credit as easy, and if you’re successful in getting credit, it’s going to probably cost you more from a loan standpoint,\u201d Reynolds said.<\/p>\n

Reynolds is also going to be watching to see whether people fall behind on their payments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, you [have] to start worrying about people paying their mortgages, and people paying their car loans and those types of things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He also said credit card delinquencies are an early sign of problems with the economy.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u200bOn Tuesday morning, three of the biggest banks in the country reported on the state of their finances:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[14736,327396,28,14737,17565,101,7728],"class_list":["post-765986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bank-of-america","tag-big-banks","tag-business","tag-citigroup","tag-credit-card","tag-economy","tag-jp-morgan-chase"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}